Some years back, my friend and I discovered the word ennui. I don't mean it hadn't been in our vocabulary up that point. We were grown women. I had a child. We'd heard of it. But by some miracle, we hadn't experienced it yet. Or if we had, we didn't know it. But suddenly, there we were. Both in the throes of ennui—our only relief the bougie label we could attach to the feeling. Ennui felt grander than the doldrums or good old fashioned boredom with life. Ennui felt like something one could declare over a martini. Something one could use as a proper excuse for failing to bring a gift to a party. Or show up to the party at all. Something one could succumb to. I'm not positive, but I think our mutual delight with the word itself pulled us out of the pit of despair. We enjoyed the idea of ennui so much that suddenly we had something to live for again. And when one has some thing worth living for, it's not such a leap to acknowledge that one has many such thing